Suunto 9 Baro quick discharge problem

Shrek3k

Just a short information about an - second time, first time completely registered - incident.
From Monday, 15jun20 2330 hrs until Tuesday 16jun30 1500 hrs my battery dropped from 47% to 0% (till automatic off), without any activity or atypical sync (and I do not use 24hr HR, sleep tracking or notifications). This happened before once, but I did not register the exact hours than.
Really ‘amazing’, as I have no clue why this happened. Usually I have excellent battery life, and everything looks good and stable now again, after I recharged the watch.

surfboomerang

@Shrek3k could it be that Suunto App somehow kept the watch busy? Faulty sync or something?

Shrek3k

@surfboomerang unfortunately not possible, because BT is usually deactivated on my smartphone and only activated temporarily and manually when synchronising activities (or going by car). So, BT has been deactivated all the hours mentioned.

surfboomerang

@surfboomerang said in Suunto 9 Baro quick discharge problem:

@surfboomerang said in Suunto 9 Baro quick discharge problem:

Too early to draw any conclusion, but I noticed similar behaviour with my S9. Mine is 1.5 years old now and the last couple of weeks I noticed that watch drain battery faster than it did before.

When I bought the watch I could almost do 12-14 days on a single charge with notifications on and a couple of hours of activity recording.
Now I can barely reach 7-8 days on a single charge with the same settings.

Due to a lot of factors and the fact that I didn’t record the draining process, I can’t conclude that it is a bad battery or the use of the watch changed over the last year.

I let it run out of battery now until it switches off and will then do a full recharge. I will monitor the battery use more closely to hope that I can make any conslusions.

I will keep you informed…

The test starts from today. I let my watch run all the way to 0% (charging icon) and recharged it to 100% at 15:00 today.
I will keep track of the battery drain every 24 hours and before and after activities. I will post the results once the watch is empty again. (hopefully more then 12 days from now )

Ok, so the results are in…

TL;DR:
It look like the battery life of my Suunto 9 Baro hasn’t deteriorated over the 1,5 years that I own it.
Even with regular activity it still gives me almost 11 days on a full charge.

Motivation:
I bought my Suunto 9 Baro 1,5 years ago. I never kept a good record of the battery drain, but in my mind I did around 11-13 days on a single charge. Lately I got the feeling that the charge cycle changed from 11-13 days to 7-9 days. Together with this topic on Suunto forum, I decided to keep track of the battery drain to see if my feeling was right and that my watch also suffers from battery deterioration.

Test setup:
The idea was to let the watch run totally out of juice before I would charge it to 100%. After that I would record the battery percentage every 24 hrs from the moment I disconnected the watch from the charger. I also decided to record the start and end battery level of every activity I recorded with the watch so I could distinguish the idle drain (watch mode) from the battery drain during an activity.

Watch settings:
I do use the bluetooth connection and notifications for some apps, but I don’t use 24/7 HR monitoring and sleeptracking.
The table below shows the watch settings that are responsible for the Idle battery drain in the results:

Activity settings:
During my test period I performed 2 types of activity: Running and Windsurfing
The table below shows the profile settings for the two activity types. Those settings are responsible for the Activity Battery drain in the results

Results:
On 17th of June 2020 at 15:00, I removed the watch from the charger after almost 4hrs of charging.
The days after I performed regular activity as the table below shows. The total battery drain over 24 hrs is split into the drain during an activity and the drain without an activity.

Conclusion:
As the results show I almost got 11 days on a single charge.
“Almost”, as I had to recharge the watch before it went completely to 0% because I needed it in an event that day. So I had to derive the last day from the results the days before.

Well…11 days, wasn’t that the bare minimum as when I bought the watch? True.
So had my battery life deteriorate over time? I don’t think so.

Because one thing change significantly the last few months in comparison with 1,5 years ago: The Corona virus.
The virus outbreak caused the closure of all team- and indoor sports in The Netherlands. I replaced a lot of days on which I normally did an indoor sport with running outside (which was still permitted).
This caused more activities with GPS per week thus a higher battery drain. If I see the battery drain for the average Running Activity, I think I would get around 2 days extra on a single charge if a did an indoor sport on some days.

So that brings me back to 13 days on a single charge if I had the same activity pattern as 1,5 years ago. That means I did not notice any battery deterioration over time.

hel790

I can confirm massive batter drain on Suunto 9 Baro and Baro Titanium after last update.
Keeping both devices with Power Saving on and Flight Mode on (basically the devices are inert), and untouched; they got 12% battery drain in just 2 days, where usually would only use 1%

isazi

@hel790 have you tried a soft reset? Mine does not behave this way, it uses 1% or less power per day when sitting untouched.

hel790

@isazi Will try and let you know Thanks

ollemelin

@hel790

How did it go? My S9B started draining some weeks ago. Yesterday i went to bed and left it on 50% battery. When I woke up it was totally drained.

I have not noticed anything special during activities.

hel790

@ollemelin Soft reset did the trick! Reset it 3 days ago at 94% found it this evening at 91%

fritzbt2013

@hel790 happy to hear. having this issue as well, with similar numbers. 6 to 9% a day. Unit is new so I never got a chance to see it’s behavior prior to firmware update. Already tried soft reset but will try again. My other older S9 baro is as expected, about 1% day before and after latest firmware.

Stefan Kersting

Got my S9B today and disappointed about the battery drain. No message push to the watch, background light 5%, daily HR and sleep tracking on. From 18:15 to 23:30 the battery drained 14 % from 79 to 65 %. Have the newest fw on my s9b. Did a soft start too. Bt on too.

sartoric

@Stefan-Kersting
Have you ever calibrated the battery or at least recharged it once ?

As said before , you can contact support, maybe you have a defective unit.

Brad_Olwin

@Stefan-Kersting said in Suunto 9 Baro quick discharge problem:

Got my S9B today and disappointed about the battery drain. No message push to the watch, background light 5%, daily HR and sleep tracking on. From 18:15 to 23:30 the battery drained 14 % from 79 to 65 %. Have the newest fw on my s9b. Did a soft start too. Bt on too.

Here is a recent test I did:
39h total time
24/7 HR
Standby on ~60% of the time
Sleep tracking on
30 min Indoor Exercise
1.5h outdoor; GPS best; smartsensor
Mobile connected iOS
Battery 100% to 62%
At this rate would last ~62h

Stefan Kersting

@sartoric no, I did not recharge the battery was charged 78% when I got the watch. How do you calibrate the battery?

Stefan Kersting

@Brad_Olwin the standby time is estimated to 60% or did you measure it? so with all functions on and a little bit of training the battery lasts just 2,5 days per charge 🧐?

cosme.costa

@Stefan-Kersting said in Suunto 9 Baro quick discharge problem:

@Brad_Olwin the standby time is estimated to 60% or did you measure it? so with all functions on and a little bit of training the battery lasts just 2,5 days per charge 🧐?

Turn off sleep tracking, daily HR (this is the battery eater) and the backlight off and you will get your 8-10 days with around 4-6h performance GPS. Besides the battery meter is not proportional, I mean depending on the % you are seems the discharge is faster and then slows down, this I have seen it in a lot of devices with batteries. I would also wait a few charge-discharge cycles before take any conclusions.

sartoric

@Stefan-Kersting
full charge (let it connected for half an hour while at 99/100%)
full discharge (let it shut down)
full charge

Brad_Olwin

@cosmecosta said in Suunto 9 Baro quick discharge problem:

@Stefan-Kersting said in Suunto 9 Baro quick discharge problem:

@Brad_Olwin the standby time is estimated to 60% or did you measure it? so with all functions on and a little bit of training the battery lasts just 2,5 days per charge 🧐?

Turn off sleep tracking, daily HR (this is the battery eater) and the backlight off and you will get your 8-10 days with around 4-6h performance GPS. Besides the battery meter is not proportional, I mean depending on the % you are seems the discharge is faster and then slows down, this I have seen it in a lot of devices with batteries. I would also wait a few charge-discharge cycles before take any conclusions.

This is true, I had everything on and did a few exercises. The 24/7HR, continuous connection to mobile and sleep tracking take some toll on the battery. Without those or with just mobile connection the watch will go much longer.

Tomáš Lízl

Hello everyone,

I would like to know your battery life, or compare if the way my battery is draining is standard (before I possibly contact support).
In the settings below I have a battery level of 20% after 4 days (approx 120 hours). During these 2 days I didn’t measure any activity, thus only drove in smartwatch mode.

list itemBrightness - Low
list itemBacklight off, Standby mode off
list itemBluetooth - active incl. notifications from phone
list itemHR on wrist - on 24/7
list itemSleep tracking - on
list itemDo Not Disturb function - active 7h overnight
list itemWatchface - dark
list itemPower saving mode - off

I will add that the watch was purchased 14 days ago and updated to the latest firmware.
I have tried soft reset, but not hard one - I will try to perform.

What I just would like to know if the behaving is standard one, or should worry.

Thank you in advance for your feedback

isazi

@Tomáš-Lízl I think that the S9 with 24h HR and sleep enabled should get you to 5/6 days without activities, so more or less what you see now.